


A Prodding in the Ribs

by Petronia



Category: The Young Pope (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Catholic Guilt, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Series Spoilers, Violence, highkey what you'd expect from watching the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia
Summary: “Relieve me,Holy Father,” said Lenny. There was a pause.“Relieve me of my position, Holy Father,” Andrew repeated back, tonelessly.“No,” said Lenny. He reached for the button under his desk. Andrew dropped Angelo Sanchez’s file in front of him.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



_Nuestra Señora de Suyapa_ resides in the silver-and-white Basilica of her name, in a suburb of Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. She is a folk carving of cedar wood, only six centimetres tall: a child’s palm could enclose her in safety.

When she was found – not made – in 1747, Suyapa was its own village. The story went that a travelling peasant, Alejandro Colindres, encountered a hard object under his body when he bedded down on the ground for a night. He threw it away, but it seemed to return to him, invisible in the dark.

There are countless such figures of the Virgin, across Central and South America. An archaeologist of the far-flung future may be able to draw a constellation of sites, across eras and geography, as they do for the Mayan civilization’s past: Our Lady of La Altagracia, Santo Domingo, 1502. Our Lady of Copacabana, Bolivia, 1583. Our Lady of the Rosary, Guatemala, 1592. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico, 1531, whose name the _conquistadors_ perhaps misunderstood, for she spoke to Juan Diego in Nahualtl, naming herself _coatlallope_ : crusher of serpents.

There are broad similarities, too, in the associated legends. Her image was made in the New World, or was brought from the Old – it did not matter, so much that She travelled. She fell into the hands of the poor, the indigenous, the devoted. Then, at some appointed time and place, She elected to remain. There was no blinding light, no oppressor struck down from a height. Instead the weather would not lift; the cart would not go; the carving or painting returned undramatically to its place, though no shrine had been built. She was gentle, unyielding, like a persistent prodding in the ribs.

 

***

 

The first time Andrew had taken part in a service in the Basilica of Suyapa, not long after completing his studies at the seminary, he had been standing next to a young man named Angelo Sanchez. When Archbishop Giardini had said _y bendito es el fruto_ , their eyes had met, and the other boy had smiled. Andrew had found him beautiful – so went the memory.

A few hundred boys named Angelo Sanchez are born every year, if not thousands, in the Americas and in Europe. Of those, some have beauty; some are moved, openly or in secret, by the beauty of other men; perhaps most have faith in God. The Angelo Sanchez Andrew knew in Honduras was now middle-aged, serving as chaplain to a state correctional facility in Jefferson County, Texas. Archbishop Giardini died some years later, in mysterious, violent circumstances, after having been made cardinal. He had been known to preach against human rights abuses from the pulpit.

Andrew had been assigned his place. He was careful to make no enemies. Every once in a while, under the Virgin’s minute smile, he catches the eye of someone beautiful.

What is a portent? What is apophenia? What is willed? By man – or by God?

 

***

 

When they had finished school, and Lenny had gone to California, Andrew had joined a Dominican mission, to a Mayan village in the Guatemala highlands. He helped build a school house, dug ditches, gave aid to the poor. Afterward they led Bible study for catechists, and set up weavers to supply hand-made tat to the mission’s donors back in Boston and New York.

He loved the country, and the work. The physical part was sensible and honest. The _campesinos_ liked him: he had a knack for languages, and cultivated a disarming air of camaraderie.

He found ways to travel on the Church’s dime, a passport and a thumb out at the side of the road. He saw the pyramids of Tikal, Copán, Calakmul. Sometimes he had to talk himself out of situations. Men in fatigues were omni-present, toting guns and looking nervy. One President had fled the country in the spring, after attempting a coup. The UN was brokering a peace between the government and the guerillas, and the local clergy were heavily implicated in the process: seeking truth, and reconciliation, for the murder of tens of thousands, less than a decade earlier.

The New York Times reported that the army’s bullets had been bought and paid for by Reagan, and the CIA. That, too, was for the benefit of the donors.

He had offers, sometimes. Not from the weavers, the young country girls – he was careful – but well-off married women, in Guatemala City. They tithed, and Andrew found in himself a vein of persuasiveness. The women opened their pocketbooks for the mission, even as their husbands colluded with authorities to drive villagers from their land.

The Dominicans were not Marxists. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had circulated its Instructions, even as the massacres were winding down: the truest and foremost liberation was that from the slavery of sin. The Church served the poor, but it did not serve history.

Andrew did not bother to compare his own sins to the grander scheme. He saw a path forward for himself, which was all youth ever wanted.

 

***

 

By then – by way of context – there had been other boys. In the orphanage, even, where one or two had been hopelessly in love with Lenny’s inhuman, self-contained beauty; but Andrew was human, and would do.

There had also been men. The dynamic among the orphans replicated itself elsewhere. No one ever touched Lenny; Andrew guessed that his distaste for homosexuals grew through lack of empathy and exposure both, rather than unwanted experience. The experiences had accrued instead to Andrew, who had wanted them. Or thought he did.

He didn’t think of himself as damaged, though he had understood, after the fact, that the adults involved had been unscrupulous. In the course of events he had felt excitement, curiosity, pleasure – fear, too – but no violation.

But perhaps something did break within him, insidiously, not by volition but by example; a loosened cog in the mechanism that made conscience, looking to God.

 

***

 

For instance, he ministered to the people of Tegucigalpa for five years, with energy and kindness, and they loved him. But he made no enemies.

 

***

 

For instance, when Lenny instituted the purge, he let it happen.

 

***

 

He let the purge happen, knowing that the eighteen-year-old boy who had dug ditches in Guatemala would have been caught in the net. It took time. Plans were put into motion, reports were compiled and acted on. Andrew made himself read them. Then he made himself sign the letters and attend the interviews, as if getting down into the muck and unpleasantness could restore the tattered shreds of his own probity. It was two months before Angelo Sanchez’s file crossed his desk.

Angelo Sanchez.

What is a portent? What is willed?

 

***

 

“I can’t do this,” he said to Lenny, as soon as he was in the audience chamber. His mind had been curiously blank for days, a lens focussing in and blurring out on adobe walls, a smile in memory, a carven smile – _and blessed is the fruit_ – but he had waited nonetheless, for his weekly fifteen minutes with the Pope. If he had tried to force an emergency meeting, Lenny would have made it his personal pleasure to keep Andrew waiting.

“Don’t be dramatic,” said Lenny, for all as if he had a leg to stand on. “It’s not 11AM yet.”

“Relieve me of my position as the head of the Congregation for the Clergy.”

“Relieve me, _Holy Father,_ ” said Lenny. There was a pause.

“Relieve me of my position, Holy Father,” Andrew repeated back, tonelessly.

“No,” said Lenny. He reached for the button under his desk. Andrew dropped Angelo Sanchez’s file in front of him.

“I owe you obedience, Your Holiness,” he said, “but my hand can’t cast this stone. You impose on me a burden of sin – of hypocrisy. I’ve done everything this boy has done, and more. I’ve had sex with men. In fact, I’ve done it often. I’ve come between a woman and her husband, a man and his wife. I’ve been a coward about it. I’ve let fear push me toward compromise. I broke my vows – not out of lust, but because I never truly intended to keep them. This boy has yet to make his. He’ll be a better priest than me.”

His voice was back under control by the end.

He had wondered if Lenny knew. It seemed impossible that he didn’t. It seemed equally impossible that he knew the entire extent of it.

Something did ripple across Lenny’s face, but it didn’t parse as surprise or disgust or confusion; it might have been impatience.

“You’re discomfited by your weakness,” he said, “So you’re here to waste my time. _My_ time, Cardinal Dussolier, not yours – with your baffling insistence that the _candidate_ decides who’s qualified for the job when God is the one doing the hiring. You have to do this for me, Andrew. That hasn’t changed.”

“Then you’re as much a hypocrite as I am,” said Andrew.

“Go ahead,” Lenny said. “Blame the Pope for your problems. That’s what I was elected for: to listen to your whining.”

“I’ll come out as bisexual,” said Andrew. “I’ll call a press conference.”

“Are you trying to _threaten_ me?” said Lenny.

He sounded so offended, like a cat, that Andrew burst into laughter. Once he started he couldn’t stop. It trailed off into giggles, dry spasms of the diaphragm.

Lenny said nothing. He waited Andrew out, drawn patiently into himself now: a bad sign. Once Andrew had fallen silent he reached under his desk, ostentatiously telegraphing the movement, and pressed the button.

Sister Suree entered. “Holy Father,” she said, and stopped as Lenny raised his hand.

“Get me,” he said, then paused. “Get me the second in command in the Congregation for the Clergy. I have no idea what his name is, I’m just curious if anyone was at all productive this week.”

Lenny’s memory was infallible: he remembered everyone’s names.

Andrew turned around and left.

 

***

 

Angelo Sanchez found him in a restaurant, later that night, and introduced himself. The gears had turned, and he had been barred from attending seminary altogether. The boy was vibrating with rage and sorrow, but with hope as well: Andrew was indescribably sorry to see it. He would have preferred a pre-existing despair.

“Your Eminence wasn’t there,” Angelo said. He was beautiful. Andrew’s initial thought, which shamed him, had been that he didn’t look much like the other, the first Angelo. But in truth he barely remembered the other’s face. “I saw that you did not sign the letters. I believed – I thought that perhaps—”

“I no longer occupy the position,” Andrew said, and only then did he understand it to be true. “Were our Most Holy Father consistent in applying doctrine, rather than mercy, he would defrock me. Do you understand?”

Angelo stared at him.

"They say you're like brothers in faith," he said. "You and Pius."

"Of a sort," Andrew said.

“This was my only dream,” Angelo said. “I have nowhere to go, now. Nothing to turn to. What should I do?"

And he began to weep.

Andrew held him, and prayed. It lasted a long time. Later on he found the night hard to remember in detail, but he thought he might have said other things: some jumbled version of what he had told Lenny about himself, without the sordidness. And then, his own words and Lenny’s blurring together,

“God chooses our path. We’re only candidates for His work. If He has called you it’s because He’s made a place for you. It might not be what you think it is, and it might not be what you want. But you – I – we must have faith. Not in understanding, but in His love that encompasses us.”

The boy lived in a far-flung neighbourhood of Rome, with extended family. Andrew brought him back home at dawn, and saw him put to bed. Then he went back to his own and slept dreamlessly, for ten hours.

When he woke they told him about the suicides: one rejected candidate in Buenos Aires, another in Liverno.

Andrew was on the next plane out, to Honduras.

 


	2. Part Two

Andrew had asked Lenny, once, early on at the orphanage, why he called Sister Mary that. “She told me to,” Lenny had said. “She said never to call her Ma.”

This had made sense to both of them at the time. Andrew’s parents were dead, but Lenny had been _abandoned_. Andrew missed his birth mother – her hugs, her catchphrases, the scent of her hair – but no mystery had been left in the wound to fester.

Lenny’s mother was irreplaceable, because she was alive.

Much later, Andrew had wondered if Sister Mary had misjudged. If she had tried to do right by Lenny, but by allowing his fixation, had been unintentionally cruel to him instead.

It was later still before it occurred to him, with one of the sudden, involuntary shifts of perspective by which maturity arrives, that Sister Mary _would never have treated them differently_ : it would have abhorred her to set a child apart with distance, no matter the rationale. Even if she had believed Lenny’s presence at the orphanage to be temporary – and she would have suspected that it was not.

But by then Andrew could not bring himself to ask her. Lenny’s memory was infallible: he was afraid it would be his own at fault.

 

***

 

Where are the inflection points, on which grace operates? Had God – for instance – moved Sister Mary? If Lenny had not already keenly felt Billy’s incipient loss, if the stigmata were not open and bleeding, would the miracle have occurred?

Priests were eternal sons, Lenny had told him, once. It betrayed an internal lacuna Andrew did not think he had. But he was an orphan too, and there was a peace – a gesture, a voice, a scent – that eluded him.

 

***

 

“My profound religiosity tells me I should forgive you,” Carlos said, but Andrew was no longer listening. He was flooded with adrenalin, as a room might be flooded with black water or white light, and at the centre of the room there was quiet.

The car slowed, then slowed further. Maribeth wept, one hand now clenched in the fabric of her dress, close to her chest. Andrew imagined the scapular he had seen so often on its fine silk thread, tucked in the space between her lovely breasts.

 _I shouldn’t have put you in this position,_ he thought. _I knew better than that. I’m sorry for what you’re about to see._

Carlos reached under the seat.

The car veered off the gravel road, still slowing, onto the grass. Then it stopped entirely. Carlos paused.

“Keep driving,” he said.

“It’s the engine,” the driver said. He met Carlos’s eyes in the rearview mirror and turned the ignition. The key moved loosely, as if no mechanism were implicated.

“Go look,” Carlos said. The driver got out of the car, circled to the front, and put its hood up.

Carlos turned his attention back to Andrew. He said nothing, but his gaze was wary and cold, body deliberately relaxed, as if he suspected Andrew had planned the contretemps and would now take advantage. Make a move toward the gun, perhaps. There was no sound, beyond the minute irregular catches in Maribeth’s breathing; she had learnt to cry silently long ago.

Andrew was a man of the Church. He wouldn’t know what to do with the gun if he’d had it in his hands.

They weren’t far enough from Téguz yet – barely beyond Villa Nueva. One or two diesel trucks trundled by as they waited. Locals knew better than to investigate an expensive SUV parked at the side of the road, but they were likely to remember. A more basic and serious problem would be an inability to drive away from the scene.

The driver came back around, to the window on Carlos’s side. “This is going to take time,” he said.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Andrew said.

The words came out of the room inside him, with its strange quiet.

“What the hell are you talking about,” said Carlos.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Andrew said. “It won’t go, that’s all.”

“We’re going to take a walk,” Carlos said. He took the gun from under the seat and took off the safety. Then he got out of the car and motioned for Andrew to get out as well. “You two stay with the car,” he said.

 _Better for Maribeth,_ Andrew thought. In the corner of his eye he saw her crumple to her knees in the gravel and start to pray. His mind caught on her voice like a votive’s wick.

_Ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte._

They took a dirt path uphill, winding between sparse vegetation. The sun was very hot. Andrew prayed the Rosary in Latin as he walked, soundlessly, it being as good a way of keeping time as another. Besides which Lenny had a point sometimes, regarding the relative value of the classics.

 _Lenny’s going to mope,_ he thought, and felt a great tenderness warring with the adrenalin. The quiet feeling didn’t recede, but his body began to hurt.

He’d gone through the whole Rosary once and was halfway through the second decade again when Carlos gestured at him to stop walking. They were on top of the hill, in a clearing surrounded by trees. Andrew turned and squinted at him.

“May I have a cigarette?” he asked.

Carlos lit one and passed it over. They stood while Andrew smoked it silently, amidst the buzzing of insects. A breeze rose and fell, briefly replacing the scent of tobacco smoke with that of sun-warm fir and crushed pepper tree leaves.

“Run,” Carlos said, finally, after Andrew had finished the cigarette and put out the stub. “Run and I’ll make it quick.”

Andrew wiped the sweat from his forehead; it was threatening to run into his eyes. “No,” he said. As an afterthought he added, “May God have mercy on your soul.”

“Suit yourself, Padre,” Carlos said. He lifted the gun and shot Andrew twice, in the gut. Andrew fell as if he’d been flicked by a giant’s finger.

 

***

 

At first it was too much of a shock to hurt. Then the pain was bad, and the sun burnt him, and he wept; courage and regret being both meaningless.

Then the quiet came over him again, slowly, and with it a lessening of gravity. As if the pain, nevertheless present, remained on the other side of a lengthening tether. The sun was no longer hot, was somehow gone, dissolved into the cloudless sky. Andrew gazed up into the bright void and saw that there were layers and layers to it, transparencies of air and space laid one on top of another, without circumference – and that he was part of it, not the centre. Beyond him the stars, and beyond that still.

And yet it was familiar: nostalgic despite abstraction, with the quality of memory. A warmth, a flavour, a whisper of sound.

 _Oh,_ he thought. _You came._

Then there was a rushing, as of pulse in his ears, or film being wound through a projector. A flickering beating of wings that loomed above him and blotted out the light.

 

***

 

He opened his eyes in the intensive care ward, with Sister Mary at his side. When she saw he was awake she clutched his hand, and began to cry.

Later on she told him she had been in the helicopter when the pilot had spotted him, on the hilltop. Lenny had roused her before breakfast and put her on a chartered flight, which had then to put in at San Pedro Sula, due to a scheduling conflict. The military had provided the helicopter as the last leg.

Lenny hadn’t said much, beyond _get Dussolier back here_. Andrew must’ve still been in the air at the time, over the Atlantic. No one would have missed him yet, and he had told no one but Maribeth.

“But I had a feeling,” Sister Mary said. “Even the way we found you, after – the doctors said you shouldn’t have held on. But you did. Andrew, you were in a coma for weeks. It’s a miracle that you’re alive.”

A miracle.

A stopped engine and a mix up at Toncontín air traffic control.

A miracle – the self-evident truth of it.

What is a pattern, perceived in the random nature of clouds? What is God?

 

***

 

It transpired after some weeks, while Andrew was still in hospital, that the purge was rescinded. There was some kind of intrigue, primed by the Cardinal Secretary of State, about which Sister Mary was uncharacteristically cagey. Lenny could have reinstated it, but didn’t. He never explained himself. Perhaps the suicides had something to do with it, or Andrew did, or others like Andrew. Salvation was for the individual, and so was Lenny’s favour.

If Lenny had asked God to save Andrew, he wouldn’t admit it. But that didn’t matter.

Andrew hadn’t doubted, on the hilltop. He hadn’t doubted when he’d confronted Lenny over Angelo Sanchez, or when he’d preached in San Miguel Archangel Cathedral by day and taken his share of lovers by night. To be frank, the incident of Billy’s mother had always been enough for him. As it was for Sister Mary, too – but she focussed on Lenny’s role.

Andrew had simply felt, as an adult, that he’d been allowed too close, to the heart of things; even standing at the periphery as he had been. Close enough that faith had become fact, and numinousness was a stone in one’s pocket.

And yet there were plans that could not be understood, by Andrew or even – he knew – by Lenny. Lenny, too, was a pawn enclosed in safety, a statuette in a child’s hand. There was a path chosen for them, elsewhere; something encompassing, that returned and returned, and did not yield.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not Catholic, and I've never been to Honduras _or_ Guatemala, so I'm out on a limb here; let me know if anything's ridiculous.
> 
> I chewed over Dussolier's fate for a bit, especially in context of Gutierrez's arc, and came to the conclusion that he would have been saved if he'd had the balls to confess (ha), and concurrently to be a better bishop - the two things are connected. Like I'm not sure it's in line with _my_ ethical views, but it's my reading of what the show is saying. The show's pretty ineffable (a good thing) but if it has a discernable argument it seems to be for praxis rather than orthodoxy, when all is told.


End file.
